The Far Side of weather...

Somebody actually said it to me today ... "Hot enough for you?"

Weatherbug says it's 98. But hey, don't worry. It's a wet heat.

I was in Starbuck's for a time this afternoon. The people were pouring in. So many of them obviously had never been in to a Starbuck's before.

I think I heard it 6 or 7 times in 90 minutes. "I'd like something cold, do you sell anything cold?"

Man.

Cultural recluses I guess.

I thought our entire Western Civilization had actually done away with the internal combustion engine and our reliance on fossil fuel and we were running on Frappucinos and iced lattes these days.

Which takes me back to the most miserable I've ever been in the heat...

My parents decided every summer from the year before my sister (2 years my senior) graduated high school until we I was out of college for 2 years that, "This is the last summer we'll be able to travel as a family."

So began the yearly installments. Before that, they'd been the "every so often" miserable trips ... maybe the "every 3 or 4 year torture chambers." Now, the dreaded all-family LoveBoat cruise became a necessary yearly event. OH my...

We started "small". Just a little trip around the whole United States in a 20' motor home. Seattle. Chicago. Boston. NYC. Charleston/Savannah (getting the picture?). Hobart, OK (don't ask). Montana. Home.

Perhaps that's where I developed this darn nervous tic tic tic tic tic.

Eventually it got to be a European vacation. This was actually inspired by me (I am shamed to admit it).

I desperately wanted to travel, so when I graduated college and had a job, I booked a trip to England. I wanted to just go and wander... but bowed to pressure (as I always did in those days) because it wasn't safe to just wander such a wild and violent country as England, Scotland and Wales.

This was before Braveheart so you can't blame Mel Gibson for that one.

I went on the ultimate old-folks tour. What a wonderful group! What social outlet!

The nearest person to my age was 40 years my senior, though a grammy and grampy or two HAD brought along a young teen or two.

England by motorbus. Yeehaw.

But I did have a great time anyway. My first time abroad. The first of the family to travel off the North American continent.

So of course, my sister had to take 4 trips in the next year. And then ... the family trip.

We wound up in Paris, our last stop.

It was about this time of year... I know because the World Cup was just ending.

We had rooms in Paris' Grand Hotel. Everyone was on floors 2 and 3. Except us. WE had the wonderful garrett rooms at the top of the hotel, the fifth floor. Oh they were so wonderfully quaint.

And one teensy problem. There was no a/c on the fifth floor. But never mind, Paris just doesn't get that...

HOT AS A STEAMBATH IN HELL?

Breeze? Windows?

Oh, did I mention my insane sister didn't like the fumes from the city, and didn't want to take a risk of getting raped (on the 5th floor)... so we had to shut and lock our windows.

Nevermind we were in the room next door to her... there was a connecting door... so we were required (Dad opted for conflict reduction) to keep the connecting door open so she could come in and check, several times a night. Vital to make SURE we hadn't snuck those windows open...

Until the night it hit about 100 in the city... she relented. We could open the windows...

Who knew there were that many Italians in Paris? Who knew the World Cup would end at about 1am? Who know how much noise Italians in Paris could make as they circled our block with music, horns, singing, fireworks.

Who knew it could go on until well after dawn?

I subsisted those few days in Paris on a little drink I discovered called a "Caffe Liegois"... Coffee. Cream. Sugar. Ice. Blended together. It may sound familiar...

How expensive could the lot of them be? When delivered by room service?

Ummmm.. $150?

Ever see the Far Side panel, "Nerds in Hell"? A couple of guys in geeky clothing and taped glasses... and one of them is saying ....

... hot enough for ya?

D--

Faux foe...

... "I know, let's do it in a faux weathered surface, you know, one of those crackle things."

So spoke I in the heat of the moment, the flush of battle. When things were good and times were right. When we were fresh and unsullied. When I was REALLY stupid.

So right now we can't afford the really big fixes. But paint, who can't do paint?

First off, let me counteract a lie: "It's just a gallon of paint, that's CHEAP!"

OK, here's the truth. There's no such thing as "just a gallon of paint".

Lowe's knows this. Home Despot knows this.

I go in for a $0.10 latex glove and walk out with $138.99 worth of absolutely indispensible things I didn't know I needed.

And faux! Who invented the faux? How many faux (or fauxes, or faus, or fauxi?) were killed in the making of a quart of that stuff?

Next side note: The faux is the corporate iconic beast of the home shopping channel QVC.

So this room, this living room. Let me describe its original paint scheme as we obtained it... slime beige. It has an alternate name, urine creme. Too strong? I think not.

And the ceiling, WELLLLLLlll now THAT has been a work of art.

My original home design consultant (ex-wife) one Christmas looked at the faux (there it is again!) texture cracking off the ceiling and the beautiful browns and rusts and mildew-blacks of a long-gone storm and roof failure and said, "You know, with the angel up there on the tree against that background it looks almost like the Sistine Chapel!"

Right. A faux Sistine Chapel. If viewed through the prism of a Timothy Leary experience.

I'd tried to perk that room up. Spent more than I should on two couches. It just occurs to me now what they were. They were ... faux couches.

Faux suede. Micro fiber.

Now think about it. Fiber is fiber. Micro fiber means it's really little. Not really fibrous at all. Maybe under the microscope they're really more like little nubbins or balls. In fact, I know what they REALLY are... FAUX FIBER!!!

That impulsive furniture day, I'd looked that day at twills and denims and such... But no, said the clerk, "You have kids and cats, you need something that will really stand up... Only leather and micro-suede will do that."

My question 2.5 years later is: Stand up to what?

I knew instinctively that leather would NOT stand up to cat claws... but certainly faux suede would, right? Right. For 15.2 seconds. The couch arms are shreds. (Maybe I need faux cats.)

And to continue the thought string (more of a micro-thought-fiber, really), I thought until today that those couches were grey. I'd have SWORN to you they were gray. Grey. Gray.

Until I spoke my belief outloud today during another run to Lowe's to work on those walls.

I said "grey".

My current design consultant and her associate (brother) said, "Grey? Dad, what couches are YOU talking about."

Now I'm SURE I describe them as GRAY to the clerk at the furniture store. She agreed with me, grey. That was probably AFTER I said something about being red-green color-blind. (As a person who truly enjoys color and design, this always turns out to be just a tad-bit inconvenient.)

BUT... if the customer said gray, no need to correct him.

Come to think of it, I think they probably are a kind of gray. FAUX GREY.

SO... we painted on our "High Hiding Primer". That really worked. Hid the stuff we were really too lazy to fix. My 4th declared, "Dad, that's cool, let's just leave the walls like that!"

Oh no! We had plans. Color depth. Pop. Pow. Wow!

We were going to CRACKLE!

So we painted on the peachy-creamy undercoat. It looked good in the store.

It looked good on the walls!

HOORAY! We're doing well (I must add that the goal here was to surprise our interior coordinator/designer while she was on a babysitting foray... so the assistant and I were doing this quickly... always a good plan).

Next day we opened the faux crackle stuff. Figured out what it really was. Elmer's glue slightly thinned. And marked up to $13 a quart.

But we're gonna crackle so it's worth it.

Now another aside, the assistant and I have really got this painting thing down. I've now mastered the rolling edger (what a handy contraption... a pad that works like a roller/brush... a faux brush!). The assistant has the roller down.

I edge, he rolls... we did the 3 walls 15', 10', 15', in about 45 minutes. WOW are we good!

Only thing is... it's 10:45 when we finish. PM. Instructions say we must begin the next piece within 1-4 hours, or it's no-go.

11:45PM and we begin phase FOUR of this "pop, pow, wow". Here's the famous quote from the instructions: "For more dramatic surfaces, use a brush rather than a roller".

A brush. Ummm... I'm not good with brushes. I'm ok, but not great. Haven't really done it enough to be confident. Kinda tend to ... brush and brush and ... "Do not overwork topcoat as surface may become gummy."

OOOooh my. How did they know? Could they see into my future?

And when "surface becomes gummy" it ... well... it sags. The crackle faux stuff sticks to the top paint but SLIDES on the bottom paint. And slides. And slides.

Assistant is banished... He's not confident or steady enough with the brush. Course netierh am I.

It's 12:15. AM. The minions are sent to their perches in the lofts.

Progress is torturously slow. This whole missive is drafted while ... stroking. Up. Down. Over. My head is full.

I begin to get the hang of it, and by the time I'm on the back wall (3 hours later) I have crackle. But what of the early areas? WAAAAY too much "drama". The creamy show-through is big enough to ... to drive a faux through.

At 3:30 I stop looking at the clock. Later I look over my shoulder as I'm coming into the home ... stretch (reaching up for the high places) and see ... dawn breaking.

I put the last touches on and finally look at the clock... repair some sags too big to leave (ugh, that looks ugly up close) and wash the brushes, tumbling into bed for faux sleep at 7:30.

It's a work day. More like faux work I'm afraid, after that night.

... And when I awake ...

I HATE it.

No, not really that. I mean, it's ok, even kinda cool.

But I had something in my mind, and that wasn't it. Not even close. And the early places where there's so much light showing through... just NOT right. Not blending with the other walls.

Only one thing to do ... I have a faux collapse. A dad-breakdown.

My muse talked some sense into me (I was talking of paint remover and scraping the thing clean... what fauxlly). She recommended a couple of approaches, one of which I adopted today... It worked.

Any gueses????

That's right...

A faux finish!

D--

Amazing Fatwah ... Or ... The Confessions of a Baptized Humorist ...

I'll admit it, I find the Danish cartoons hilarious. I suppose I'm risking a fatwah myself in saying it. But the picture of Mohammed in a turban of bombs... Of Mohammed urging terrorists to stop encouraging suicide bombers because, "We're running out of virgins..." All those make me laugh hard.

I admit, too, that I've always had a secret little love for Christian versions of the same. I thought the Church Lady on SNL was the funniest running skit they ever did (apologies Fernando). And who do you suppose is urging me to say that? Who? Who? Could it be ... SAAATTTTAAAAANNNNN????

When I was in college, The Wittenburg Door began it's regime as the Mad Magazine of Christian theology. Frankly, I sputtered about it being awful, but that was mostly because they were skewering my favorite theologians. I was too young to be confident in the face of humor.

Now, looking back, I see they were right.

So I wonder, why is it that the tradition of a free press, satire and humor have flourished in the countries saturated (at least at some point) by the Gospel? Why is it that in those places saturated by other religions, their symbols are simply not open to ANY humor??

Now understand, we Evangelicals and Fundamentalists have at times engaged in our own fatwah. But on the whole, we haven't bombed, maimed, murdered in reaction. Instead, we've tended to use that humor right back.

I believe that without GRACE man is pretty much humorless. Except for the humor of racism and bullying.

With grace, the grace Jesus poured out at Calvary, our minds have been opened to a new possibility. That all men are filled with foibles and sins. That our self-righteousness is funny and NEEDS to be poked and prodded.

Jesus used humor more than we now recognize. When he called the Pharisees "Whitewashed tombs" I've heard it said that it would have struck his audience as hilariously funny. He skewered the self-pious much like Dana Carvey did.

Our Savior shows us that humility, coming to Him as a little child, is the only way to seize His Kingdom. And there's nothing like the laughter of a little child.

D--

The Terrible Allure of the Past...

Keeping The Faith -- Billy Joel

If it seems like I've been lost
In let's remember
If you think I'm feelin older
And missing my younger days
Oh, then you should have known
Me much better
Cause my past is something that never
Got in my way
Oh no

I am lost in "let's remember". It's 1982, 1983. It's California, La Habra, La Mirada, Bellflower, Long Beach.

I've just moved there, started grad school. I hook up with an old acquaintance and we start going out.

The days fly by. Joy is everywhere. Such freedom. Such discovery. Living truly on my own. Being an adult.

Dinner, a walk in Belmont. Hamburger Henry's for Marua Burgers. Cheesecake at Grandmas Sugarplums. Walks through the art gallery.

The movies. The music. The long late talks. Her hair, her scent. Her soft touch on the back of my hand.

Thank God we don't see the future. Thank God we walk forward with hope, with confidence.

Looking back I see that just 6 months later it had evaporated. The realities of marriage and what I know now were her sickness made the very same places seem like dry sawdust, not the sweet fruit of the so-recent days.

I looked up. I looked around. All I saw was fear. Choking, abandoning fear. Raging in my mind. Seeming to have lost all the joy.

How did joy disappear so suddenly? Eventually I forgot that the joy evaporated like a minute's rain in the desert. But it did. It left me parched, aching, fearful. Feelings I learned to live with but never understood, never identified again til so much later.

Joy disappeared suddenly because all was an illusion. Carefully crafted to make it seem like there was life. I had my hand in that too.

The past never got in my way. But these days, it looms, lurks, hulks.

I don't wish her back. But I ache for the joy that was. Or seemed to be.

I ache for the man I was. I ache for the dreams, shredded.

I'm tired.

D--

The Purple Butterfly...

When Katie Retelle contracted leukemia, she had to leave school. She was left with a lot of time on her hands and picked up beading.

Her friends have taken up where her death left off... Their bead collection is online. All proceeds will go to the Leukemia Society.

D--

The Purple Butterfly Collection

Too much death. Too much dying...

Beloved kitty Daisy, nearly 19 years old.

We had to euthanize her. These wonderful animals that mean so much. It hurts when they leave us.

She was a good and faithful friend.

D--

What the heck am I doing???

Just thinking... Do people see Jesus in me? Are my kids growing toward Christ?

This life is SO different than what I envisioned...

In so many ways, for that I am SO grateful. This world we are in is REAL.

The coccoon of unrealism I grew up in (called the Evangelical community) was SO unreal. But still, in all of that, Jesus must never be lost.

Jesus, work in me. Shine in me.

D--